35 titillating stats about South Africans' sex lives

Would you share the details of your sex life with a curious chatbot? Last month, 2,000 South Africans did just that when they took the Sunday Times Lifestyle Sex Survey

05 November 2017 - 00:00
By Staff reporter

41.6% of South Africans have had an interracial sexual relationship, according to the Sunday Times Lifestyle Sex Survey.
Image:
123RF/gstockstudio

In October this year, Sunday Times Lifestyle conducted a sex survey in association with local research house Ratepop, using their proprietary chatbot technology. This chatbot is a computer program, designed to simulate conversation with human users, and is hosted on Facebook Messenger.

As part of the survey, more than 2,000 ordinary South Africans with internet access answered a number of questions about their sex lives.

The respondents' identities were kept strictly confidential, but they were segmented into the following demographics: age, sexual orientation, race, location, relationship status and gender.

This methodology allowed Ratepop to aggregate the overall results and analyse the data according to these demographic segments.

Here are the results:

WHO'S HAVING THE MOST SEX?

South Africans aged 41 to 50 have more sex than any other age group.

Heterosexuals have sex more often than homosexuals.

Black South Africans have the highest sex drive, followed by whites, coloureds and lastly the Indian/Asian community.

People in the Western Cape have the most sex, followed by KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.

Married couples have twice as much sex as singles.

Men claim to have sex more often than women.

62.9% of South Africans said connecting with their partner was the main reason they had sex.

HOW SATISFIED ARE WE WITH OUR SEX LIVES?

Couples in a relationship enjoyed sex the most; they gave their sex lives an average score of 7 out of 10.

Married couples ranked their sex lives 6.2 out of 10.

Singles seem to be sexually unhappy with a low average score of 5.4, which is below the national average of 6.4.

54.1% of women said they were most likely to orgasm while having sex with their partner, while 41.1% were more likely to climax while masturbating. 4.7% of women say they've never had an orgasm.

47.5% of women felt that it's not the size of the penis that counts, but how you use it. 40.4% of men agree.

That said, 30.8% of black women and 19.9% of white women believe that, yes, size is very important. Only 24.3% of men agree.

WHAT DO WE THINK ABOUT DURING SEX?

71.8% of men and 57.2% of women think about their partners during sex.

Of the 43% of women who don't think about their partners: 13.2% think about themselves; 1.1% think about their ex-partners; 20.1% think about nothing; 5.3% think about someone else; and 2.9% think about the ceiling.

Image:
123RF/Lasse Kristensen

HOW CLUED UP ARE WE ABOUT USING CONDOMS?

16.9% of singles aged 18 to 24 have had sex without a condom because they were drunk, and 20% of them because there were no condoms around.

HERE'S HOW WE DEFINE A SEX DROUGHT:

58.1% of men consider not having sex for more than a week a drought, compared to 39.4% of women.

Masturbation is how 56.2% of people 'survive' a sex drought.

Not having sex is a relationship deal breaker for 54.3% of men, whereas 52.8% of women feel that an emotional connection is more important than sex.

SPEAKING OF MASTURBATION AND PORN ...

25.2% of men and 9.8% of women masturbate daily.

43% of people admitted to really liking porn, while 29.1% said they enjoyed it, but were ashamed to admit it.